"Lying in a featherbed will bring you no fame, nor staying beneath the quilt, and he who uses up his life without achieving fame leaves no more vestige of himself on Earth than smoke in the air or foam upon the water." -Dante Alighieri

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Partners

This is a statement that all of us thinks of. What is it going to be like ten or twenty years down the line? Is the government going to crackdown even more? These are big questions, but the big question is this: Are we even going to exist?

With the introduction of the so called web 2.0, fanatics are starting to get on board with the whole Internet idea. Everyday there seems to be coverage on the media about myspace or youtube or some other teenybopper community with no idea of ethics or in turn intelligence. We are seeing a dumbing down of today's society, not only in the computer sense, but in all areas. With gadgets releasing every day supposedly to ease the transition to a “high tech” lifestyle the dumbing down becomes more apparent. No one cares what goes into the products as long as it works (no matter how low the standards are). No one cares about the insides or what makes it tick. No one cares about flexibility and efficiency. In the end it's all about marketability and user-friendliness, but more so it's all about the money.

So with all this presented, where does it leave us? Do we fall into obscurity from proprietary code and algorithms and more so, security? Will the open source movement prevail? This all just speculation but as they always say “The future is near.”

This article is a prophecy from myself. I have much experience in computer security and just everyday computer know how. But recently as I was browsing through an electronic store to buy a new laptop, I noticed that all the laptops had Windows Vista pre-installed. I started thinking: “Do they not know how buggy and unreliable this system is?” All the laptops specs were so unnecessary for the average user and doing so unnecessary priced. I do not want to run a processing and memory eater to just have pretty eye candy while working on development for windows. So I walked out without buying anything. When I got home I started thinking about the future; all the who-ha's and wah-wah's of the computer industry came to play. In doing so this article is what came out of it.

In the future, computer programming is going to become a guarded practice. Programming as it is today has so many layers; more so then the past which focused on very low languages like assembly. Then Fortran came to play giving a more human syntax. From there more and more layers have been added making languages higher and higher and doing so usually slower and slower. So when languages like visual basic are the only languages being taught at many schools this starts the dumbing down of programmers, who are taught very bad habits by vb and have lower logic then say C programmers.

But all this has no concern for you. You will always know how to program, so why do you need to think about the upcoming of others? Well, for one, we all die. Most knowledge isn't written in text on a book or a data file, but spread verbally through teaching and self discovery. We have a duty to pass knowledge onto others for the wellbeing of the hacker community. Now the community has become bloated with wannabes, but anyone can tell who actually has a hunger and a will to learn. This is the common factor of our “kind”. We, unlike most, are fueled by knowledge and we will get it no matter how proprietary it is. Now this starts another question: “How long are we going to be able to get information”.

In the future there will be better security programming by the small but resourceful development community. But unless the open source movement (otherwise known as free software being free in freedom not beer) makes a fatal blow to proprietary software we will see closed source everywhere (We do technically see it now with windows being installed on practically every computer). As we know, reverse engineering is the best defense to closed source, but it can only go so far. So with all this proprietary software and better security how will we exist? Well I believe that we will always be there. But in the future, as in the beginning, hacking will be a lifestyle and not just a pastime. Better security practices will practically eliminate skiddy dos attacks and the like. Also stack based exploiting will be harder to come by as it is starting to decline today. So where does that leave us? It leaves us to not look upon the future for guidance but to see today as a medium to alter the future. That is how we live. The tomorrow will be harder, that's a given, but there is no way that the hacker ideology will die. So on that note lets strive for the better tomorrow. Let open source become the new way we look and practice software. Let your hacking incentives go and explore new realms of computing. Let information be free.

Perfect article 10/10.
I have thought of the same things, especially when I was buying a new laptop. Way too much user friendliness. It is difficult to get many things done with all the pretty windows. Easy menus and commands make it difficult to do advanced tasks. Thank you for wording it, very well written!

Indeed. User-friendliness gets in the way of people who actually know what they\'re doing...

Just think, one day, the hacker will actually have to KNOW what they\'re doing, and not load a metasploit module. Of course, eventually, there will be complacency, and we all know complacent security is a hacker\'s best friend.

Very good article, I liked it a lot.
I can totally understand what you are saying, and agree fully. More and more people are beginning to load metasploit exploits, as lordofwhee said, and are using public exploits available on many sites on the internet, milw0rm being the largest. Whatever happened to writing exploits for one\'s self?
There are 3 steps to writing exploits (in my opinion) programming; patching; and finally exploiting.
We are starting to see less and less of this, and the common computer user asking such questions as \"how do I hack myspace?\" and \"how do I compile perl?\" is just literally a joke and sickens me.

But, this breed of people will die out, and the strongest of us will survive.
But it will get harder and harder, so I say that we have to stick together.

Great article 10/10
I\'m just starting out in the world of hacking, go ahead laugh at me (you were a noob once too), but I agree with paranoiahax I also hate it when people ask me stupid questions, call me old fashioned but I say to them \"go learn how your ****ing self\" >:|

I think only people who REALLY want to learn and show it should be teached. Just my to cents. :)
Again, great article and I agree with near every word.

Hmm~ really like the article, 10, there are always be a future, a chinese proverb says if the good inproves an inch, the evil improves a foot. basically, we\'re not an endangered specie, whether you\'re a whitehad or black hat, there will always be need for security and anti security. Even if we all die, the yonger generation will eventually replace us, me, taken for example, is 15, i\'ve started around last year, the same year my brother was introduced to darker side of the internet. Now, he\'s 3 years younger than i am, but he\'s not 3 years less capable, i ask for his help all the time.

What am i trying to say? despite the fact we\'re all different, the internet is making the world flat, take wikipedia for example, when everbody pools in the information, it benefits everyone.
As long as we help eachother, we\'d have have a bright future. Say i\'d die of old age, but my brother is 3 years younger than i am, he would have a extra 3 years knowledge than i do.

Take this example futher, my parents didn\'t learn about internet at their age, by the time we\'re parents, our kids might all be asking \"how do i script an OS?\" instead of \"how do i hack myspace\"

Im sure you all know that the govronment trains hackers to hack for them, and even purposely makes loop holes for them to be able to hack more easily. Quite often, these loop holes are found and used by hackers, and then are being patched up. As soon as that hppens, the govronment once again makes more of them. This is just a little thing I like to keep in mind to remind me that it will be imossible for hacking to die out. If they dont make them, then they easily loose control.

I started out hacking when I was about 6 years old. My parents hated it, and still hate it to this day. Im now 16 years old. My friends hate when I hack their myspace, aim, emails, etc, but I cant help myself. I have a constant hunger to hack!

On my computer, Ive created doccuments that allow me to punch in just their screen names, and let myself in. I bascicly programed them to hack for me but more quickly using my skills.

I dont come on this site often, and thats why I dont have many points. So dont bug me about it.

I do plan to teach everything I know to my kids, but also make defences, so that they cant hack me. Im top in my computer programming class, and am looked up to for it. I cant stand the thought of a world without hacking, and so I know that I must help to pass it on.

PS: Im sorry for any bad grammer. I failed the classes: Reading, spelling, and english nearly every year.

@bigblackbunny
You stated that you have written a script so you can just \"punch in their screen names\" and it will give you instant access...

Tell me two things:
1)Are you an insider in MySpace, AIM, and all email services?

2)OR are you just full of bullshit?

Personally, I believe that you are just full of bullshit. If not, then please share with us these methods of this uber l33t scripting of yours.
Your reference to your ranking is immediately telling me that you are lying because you are trying to cover it up (I\'m not judging people by their ranks, just so the mods know).
Get a life, and stop trying to kiss up to the big boys.

Good article, and I fully agree with the party about the laptop. My parents just bought a new one. With a core 2 Duo porcessor and many bells and whistles on it. And you know where it will be used for? Watching DVD\'s... *Sigh*

I for one are glad that near enough every computer has vista pre-installed, it means that when i do upgrade to a better PC, i can play new games that will run directx10+ as well as the other engines available (although i would appreciate it more if windows were to release directx 10+ for different OS\'s)

VISTA SUCKS! I am pretty sure that half the people on this site will agree. It is so \"user friendly\" that you cant do anything. I tried it at office depot. The icons were like the size of golf balls on the desktop, and I couldn\'t seem to change the size. And I couldn\'t seem to access safe mode.... if Vista even has one. I for one am appalled that they are forcing this crap down our throats. Long-live XP! Or better yet, Long-live Linux!

*sigh* bigblackbunny, you really need to learn that outlandish tales of such amazing feats will not be believed here. We all know for sure that that is not possible, and the only people that might fool is your mentally deficient friends.

Excellent article Yestoi 10/10. Another thing you could have mentioned is mobile phones (in the bit about user-friendliness). The other day, this girl (The kind of girl who smokes and will most probably flip burgers at McDonalds her whole life unless she wins \'Big Brother\') made fun of me because my phone was slightly bigger than hers and didn\'t have a bluetooth connection (And no... she didn\'t know how that worked). It\'s a phone. It rings other phones. Phones don\'t need to be smaller than the palm of my hand because then i can\'t hold them...

Good wording on a good insight. Only shows that hackers are more \"thinkers\" rather that what they are purported to be.

I do not hack for the mere pleasure of it. (Unlike someone here who \'just can\'t help it\') I am studying it so that I may be able to defend more efficiently.

This site is a great ground for the community to interact (Though being an open community, it receives a few members who are just full of bull). Congratulations to all the pioneers and mods. Great job!

i remember back in the day, hacking was for geeks only,now everyone wants to be a hacker,the internet,and all the book stores are filled with bogus bull crap showing you how to "hack" your computer when really it's showing you how to reformat your hard drive. i can't wait till societies obsession with hacking is over and it's just gonna be the geeks, programmers and techies left

I don't get all the hate on Vista. I use both Vista and Gentoo for different tasks and I like them both. And lol at the guy hating Vista because he couldn't change Icon sizes, if you can't figure out how to do that i wanna see you compile a linux kernel.